ROLL AND PEEN MARKING TECHNOLOGIES

For over twenty years, Columbia Marking Tools has been designing and building special production roll marking machines for commercial metal bottles and cylinders that range from 14 to 81-inches in length and from 3 to 8-1/2-inches in diameter. These heavy-duty machines are able to mark up to 55 characters per line in either a 1/4 or 5/16-inch character size. Cycle times are typically from 7 to 20 seconds, depending on the number of characters to be marked.

The basic design of the roll marking machine features a horizontal wing base that mounts the hydraulic roller details that trap the bottle between a back-up and the hydraulic marking head. Proper positioning is determined by locating off the conical nose end of the bottle. When properly located, the roll marker contacts the bottle surface and begins the roll marking process to the predetermined length of the mark. Hydraulic marking pressure settings are determined by the character size and depth of mark. The key to achieving a uniform, legible mark on this type of a curved surface is the utilization of a roll marker that has two sets of the same mark in different holders in the marker roll. The marks are at different angles. When the roll completes the first pass, it rolls back at the second angle to finish the mark.

Now, Columbia Marking Tools  programmable peen marking technology to the same type of bottle marking machine design giving them more capability for bottles and cylinders with thinner walls and softer materials.

The machine uses the same basic clamping and locating technology as the roll marker. However a peen marking head replaces the roll marking assembly. This peen movement is controlled by an x-y axis slide arrangement that is driven through precise linear ballscrews that are bellows protected. The versatility of the system design permits the user to use either a quiet-running, servo motor drive that provides high-speed marking capability up to 10 characters per second with 0.005mm positioning accuracy, or a high-performance stepper motor drive that gives 0.02mm repeatability at 5 characters per second.

The I-Mark dote-peen and scribe systems comes complete with a keyboard and controller (not required after setup) and controller that features user-friendly prompts for quick navigation thru

programming. This software allows the user to easily create the required marking program. The text can be fixed or variable, numbering can be sequential, date coding can be set up to be automatic and character size can vary in 0.1 mm steps.